Sunday, December 12, 2004

The difference between experts and amateurs

How does a government gain information from a terrorist? The question is of more than academic interest to the United States- which, in places like Abu Ghraib prison, outside Baghdad, and the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba, has been trying to ferret out the secrets of suspected terrorists.
Those who do the interrogating rarely speak about their trade, which has often been shadowed by accusations, and sometimes revelations, of human rights violations. But the New Scientist, a British weekly, recently published an interview with Michael Koubi, who was the chief interrogator for Shin Bet, Israel's security service, from 1987 to 1993. The interview was part of special study by the magazine into the psychological methods interrogators use to extract information and the traumatic effects they can have on their subjects."